From the Millennial Star, December 1951 –

The Christmas I Missed

By Thomas E. Cheney

A beautiful little valley no more than ten miles across, deep in the mountains of rugged western America, was my home. We lived in town, a little hamlet about two miles from the mountains to the south. Three days before Christmas in 1918 my school teacher sister came home, sick, from the lower valley where she attended a teachers’ meeting.

Months before, influenza had struck like a plague, and, following in the wake, death took twelve of our three hundred residents, one of whom was the doctor. But our family had escaped the disease. Now, sometime later, disease spread again unwelcomed, and the lower valley residents again felt the tragedy of epidemic.

On the morning of December 24th my teacher-sister lay in bed with a cough and fever while my mother and my older sister and I did the chores. Mother built the fire and I brought in more wood. We were up early, for work was to be done to make Christmas merry. When breakfast time came we ate ravenously, but not before we had knelt for family prayer. That morning my mother prayed especially for preservation of her family from pestilence and disease if it be the Lord’s will. I know now that she was afraid and felt a special need for the help of the Lord that day.

While she prepared to make the cake, pie, doughnuts, and popcorn balls for Christmas, I would get a Christmas tree from the canyon.

I saddled Dolly, my white pony, strapped the axe to the right side of the saddle, and galloped off for a two-mile ride to the foothills where trees were plentiful. Though snow covered the ground and refrigerated the air, the sun was warm, my coat thick, and my heart happy. I had found a pretty tree and had started for home, carrying it across the saddle in front of me, when suddenly I shivered and felt cold. It was a sudden chill like jumping into the pond, and I was so tired I wanted to lie down.

Farmer Sherman’s hay stack close by the road had bee cut on the south side with a hay knife, and the shelf of dry, green hay about four feet high catching the warmth of the sun invited me. I dismounted from my pony, threw the reins over a post of the stack-yard fence, stood the tree by the wire, and climbed on to the hay, shaking with cold like an aspen leaf. I lay against the southern slope of hay where the sun concentrated its rays and where I was protected from the wintry breeze. The sun warmed me. How long I rested I do not know. I wanted to stay there, but I knew I could not and must go home.

As I climbed from the stack and went for my pony, I saw that she had two heads which moved in unison and then moved together and amalgamated into one. On her back again and starting toward home with the tree across the saddle, I whipped her to a gallop, for I must hurry. My head swam, however, until I felt insecure and I reined her to a walk. Though I hated to disappoint my little sister and brother by not bringing a tree, I let it fall to the side of the road; my only concern now was to get home myself. I lay down on my pony’s neck and said, “Dolly, take me home.” I remember how the saddle horn dug into my breast bone, and I would sit upright until exhausted and cling to the horn to keep from falling; then I would drop to the pony’s neck again with the saddle digging into my chest,.

I remember little of what happened when I arrived home or afterward. All I remember is that some time later I awoke, and my sister Cora sat by my bed with tears in her eyes.

“Is it Christmas morning?” I asked. Cora smiled as she wiped a tear away. “No,” she said, “yesterday was Christmas. You missed it.”

“Where is Mother and the rest?” I asked.

“Mother is very sick in her room – and Naomi and Stenna are sick in their room – and little Gordon is terribly sick with Mother.” She was wiping tears from her eyes.

“Why are you crying?” I asked. “Are you sick?”

“I am not sick,” she said, “but you have been very, very sick – and I am happy you can talk sensibly. You have been talking so strange. We can’t get a doctor – and people are afraid to come and help us. I was alone with all of you.”

“You did not have a Christmas tree,” I said.

“Nobody noticed that we did not have one – you should not have tried so hard to bring it home – too hard work for a ten year old.”

That is the year I missed Christmas with its gaiety, its tasty food, its shouts of “Merry Christmas.”

In a few weeks we were all well and strong and thankful to the Lord for health and life. If I live to the average age of man, I have but few more than twenty Christmases left. Since Christmas is such a joyous time of peace and goodwill, twenty more are all too few. Oh, happy time! I do not want to miss another.